Abstract
Accelerated eutrophication of surface water sources has resulted in an increased presence of cyanobacterial blooms in fresh water. The release of hepatotoxins like microcystins from such blooms can have a catastrophic impact on local human and wildlife ecosystems. Therefore, a rapid, low-cost, reliable, and highly sensitive method for low-concentration detection of microcystins is needed to minimize risks to public health. In this paper, we report the first experimental demonstration of microcystin-leucine-arginine (MC-LR) detection in water at low part-per-trillion levels using a portable optical sensor. The demonstrated biosensor utilizes a highly sensitive electromagnetic surface wave in periodically coupled artificial nanostructures to directly probe the interaction between immobilized antibodies and MC-LR. The surface customization reported here uses a layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte adsorption process to provide highly stable and site-directed immobilization of target antibodies. Steady-state analysis of the sensor’s response confirms that the plasmonic sensor can detect the presence of MC-LR antigens at part-per-trillion levels. The demonstrated sensor is an important first step toward realizing a lab-on-a-chip sensing system for <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$in~situ$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , autonomous, real-time, distributed environmental monitoring of MC levels in drinking water.
Accepted Version
Published Version
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